Chord Co Epic Twin review

Musical without being noticeably 'hi-fi'

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Our Verdict

A jack-of-all-trades of a speaker cable; one that acts as a great all-round advocate for well-recorded music

For

Bass is full and solid

Well controlled

Against

Can take a long time to fully burn in

Two down from the top of the range Signature cable, Epic Twin is one of two newly introduced speaker cables from The Chord Company. The conductor complement consists of two bundles of 19 silver-plated, oxygen-free copper strands.

Each bundle is 2.5mm in diameter, and the pair is twisted together, Teflon insulated and covered by a silicone rubber jacket, before being double shielded and then finished in a translucent grey sheath. There is no mention of Litz or any special weave, but Chord has eschewed such complications in the past, favouring mainstream electrical properties, apparently for consistency in different systems.

This is a modestly thick cable (10mm in diameter) but it is very tractable and certainly less bulky than Chord's other new cable, Epic Super Twin. This cable mirrors the construction of Epic Twin but doubles up the conductors, making it ideal for bi-wiring or 'shotgunning', where two sets of cable are connected to one set of 4mm plugs.

Interestingly, the two cables have much the same aural fingerprint, which is best summed up as being musical without being noticeably 'hi-fi'. There is no sheen or edge to this cable, rather it has a relaxed quality, with a full and solid bass, but not so full it sounds anything less than well controlled.

By the same token, it is a detailed-sounding cable, but not in the hyper-analytical sense in which the term is often used for some true high-end cables. It's not the sort of cable to startle you in any particular way; it's just always a pleasure to listen to. But you will find it takes a long time to fully burn in - not unknown with previous Chord cables. Alvin Gold